Somebody, somewhere is going to publish an article (and
probably already has) proclaiming November 29 as the "birthday" of
arcade video games—and that person is going to be wrong.

It's an easy mistake to make: The first arcade game that
almost anyone remembers is PONG, the
icon of video-game infancy first released by Atari on Nov. 29, 1972. As the
first certifiable "hit" in the industry, PONG popularized the genre
of arcade video gaming. But if somebody tells you PONG was first, feel free to disagree.

First, let's be clear, PONG
was a knockoff. The game's creator, Nolan Bushnell, based PONG on a similar video ping-pong game developed for one of the
earliest home gaming systems, the Magnavox Odyssey.

Bushnell played this console unit in 1972 and decided that
an arcade version could be the first major product of his budding new company,
Atari. So, contrary to popular belief, console gaming spawned major arcade
gaming—not the other way around.

Engineer Ralph Baer, the man who more or less invented the
first home video-game console in 1966, designed and patented the Odyssey
precursor to PONG. Baer sold his
"Brown Box" console to Magnavox, and it became the Odyssey. He would
go on to develop the first video-game light gun for the classic game Shooting Gallery and earn some
additional consumer tech love for creating the electronic
sound-and-color-matching game Simon.

While PONG has
undoubtedly earned a place in the video-game record books for its role in
mainstreaming arcade culture, the first coin-operated commercially sold video
game was another Nolan Bushnell creation: Computer
Space. Derived from the popular mainframe-based video game Spacewar!, Computer Space was the brainchild of Bushnell and partner Ted
Dabney; the pair designed it as a product for Nutting Associates, an early
mechanical arcade amusement manufacturer.

Computer Space was
the first commercially available arcade video game. However, it wasn't
particularly successful, which is partly why Bushnell had to start his own
company to make and distribute PONG.

So, Computer Space
was the world's first coin-operated arcade video game, right? Nope: Computer Space was the world's first commercially available coin-operated
arcade video game. The world's first coin-operated arcade video game was never
on the market—because only one ever existed.

WHAT WAS THE WORLD'S FIRST COIN-OPERATED VIDEO ARCADE GAME?

What was the world's first coin-operated video arcade game,
an obscure one-off prototype that beat both the all-but-forgotten Computer Space and the legendary PONG?

Stanford University alumni, take pride, because the world's
first coin-operated video game—Galaxy
Game—made its first appearance in Tresidder Memorial Union at your alma
mater in September 1971. It debuted just two months before the release of the
Nolan Bushnell-developed Computer Space—and
more than a year before PONG first
set fire the arcade revolution.

Just like Computer
Space, Galaxy Game was a port of Spacewar!, which had been floating
between various academic and technical institutions running DEC PDP-1 computers—notably
MIT and Stanford. Spacewar! was
something of an open source app, with several developers tweaking it while
passing it around the fledgling hacker culture. The world's only working model
of the original DEC PDP-1 is on display at the Computer History Museum in
Mountain View, CA—and it's running a copy of Spacewar!

The common elements of Spacewar!,
Computer Space, and Galaxy Game greatly resemble one of
Atari's better-known games, Asteroids—a
line-art spaceship must avoid obstacles and destroy enemies using basic
thruster controls and a missile cannon. Several other Spacewar! clones and ports would pop up under different names
throughout the 1970s, making it the ancestor of many original arcade titles.

As for Galaxy Game,
Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck programmed and built the only copy, basing it on a DEC
PDP-11/20 at the cost of about $20,000 (which is probably why it never made it
to production). It's worth noting that the first coin-operated video game took
dimes or quarters; Galaxy Game
offered a single gameplay for 10 cents or three games for 25 cents.

While Galaxy Game
never really tried to be a major commercial product, Computer Space certainly made a go of it, even finagling some
possibly inadvertent product placement in major films. You can see Computer Space stand-ups in Soylent Green, Jaws, and Woody Allen's Sleeper.

By most accounts, the gameplay was simply too complex for
the broader audience of the time, while PONG's
intuitive gameplay caught on quickly. That's what earned it a place in the
public consciousness, but it takes a little more than that to get top billing
in Geek Trivia.

Get ready for the Geekend

The Trivia Geek's
blog has been reborn as the
Geekend, an online archive of all things obscure, obtuse, and irrelevant—unless
you're a hardcore geek with a penchant for science fiction, technology, and
snark. Get a daily dose of subcultural illumination by joining the seven-day Geekend.

The Quibble of the Week

If you uncover a questionable fact or debatable aspect of
this week's Geek Trivia, just post it in the discussion area of the article.
Every week, yours truly will choose the best post from the assembled masses and
discuss it in the next edition of Geek Trivia.

This week's quibble comes from the November 15 edition of
Geek Trivia, "May
the Farce be with you." TechRepublic member Parrish S. Knight scolded me for failing a basic Star Wars spelling test.

"1) Stormtrooper
is one word, not two. 2) Please, please, please: It's wookiee, not wookie. I
can't stand it when people misspell this word."

You're correct, dear reader: I let the quick and easy path
of the spell checker seduce me and didn't think to correct for Star Wars parlance. Thanks for keeping
me sharp, and keep those quibbles coming.

The Trivia Geek, also
known as Jay Garmon, is a former advertising copywriter and Web developer who's
duped TechRepublic into underwriting his affinity for movies, sci-fi, comic
books, technology, and all things geekish or subcultural.

About Jay Garmon

Jay Garmon has a vast and terrifying knowledge of all things obscure, obtuse, and irrelevant. One day, he hopes to write science fiction, but for now he'll settle for something stranger — amusing and abusing IT pros. Read his full profile. You can a...

Full Bio

Jay Garmon has a vast and terrifying knowledge of all things obscure, obtuse, and irrelevant. One day, he hopes to write science fiction, but for now he'll settle for something stranger — amusing and abusing IT pros. Read his full profile. You can also follow him on his personal blog.